It’s Pub Day for Muhsin
al-Ramli’s
‘The
President’s Gardens’: Win
a Copy
It’s publication day
for Muhsin al-Ramli’s The President’s Gardens, and translator Luke
Leafgren has offered to share one of his copies with an interested
ArabLit reader:
If you would like a copy, throw your
hat into the comments below, and we will choose (randomly) from among them.
In 1990, Iraqi author Muhsin al-Ramli got a personal
taste of Saddam Hussein’s iron grip: His brother, Hassan Mutlak, a celebrated poet,
was hanged for attempting a coup d’état. Al-Ramli fled Iraq as soon as he
could, although he first had to complete his military service, or else he
risked imprisonment. After a period in Jordan, al-Ramli settled in Spain in
1995. In 23 years of exile, every single piece of work he has produced has been
about Iraq. At an event organized by Banipal magazine in London this January,
al-Ramli said he would continue writing about his homeland as long as it was
riven by conflict. Keep reading the review.
The characters in The
President’s Gardens also come to know what it means to
challenge Saddam Hussein. About his brother, assassinated in 1990,
al-Ramli said in an Al Jazeera profile: “I have always been influenced by him,
I am a student of Hassan Mutlak and I feel that I owe him everything I know,
for when the Iraqi regime decided to take away his life, they deprived the
world of a great voice, and I feel its my responsibility to bring out this
voice again.”
The President’s Gardens is al-Ramli’s third novel translated
into English. His first, Scattered
Crumbs (2000), was
translated into English by Yasmeen al-Hanoosh, and won the Arkansas Translation
Award. (Read an excerpt on al-Ramli’s
blog.) His second novel, Fingers
of Dates (2008) met
with wide acclaim and was longlisted for the 2009 International Prize for
Arabic Fiction. It was also translated by Luke Leafgren and published by
AUC Press; Alexandra Atiya previously interviewed him about this novel
for ArabLit.
In the Al Jazeera profile, al-Ramli also spoke about
translation:
With respect to the translations I have written, apart
from my books, I would not be exaggerating if I said that I have translated
hundreds, if not thousands of other short texts, and all of them were of the
literary genre. Translation from one language to another for me is a second
mission. I find it necessary, and at times I also find myself obliged to
translate, because although my main mission and dream is to dedicate myself
exclusively to creative writing and literature, I understand that part of my
duty is to translate from Spanish to Arabic and vice versa because I am fluent
in both, and I find it important for me to complete this service between the
two languages and the two cultures.
Again, to enter the drawing, simply add any
comment below, although preferably something to distinguish yourself from a
bot. This
is open to anyone worldwide.
Velentine Viene
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